Hong Kong’s outskirts groan under piles of trash

With 13,000 tonnes of domestic waste dumped each day, the territory’s landfills are reaching capacity and experts say urgent government action is needed to prevent an environmental crisis

By Laura Mannering / AFP, HONG KONG

A bulldozer drives though a landfill in Hong Kong on March 6 last year as the Chinese city of Shenzhen looms in the background.

Photo: AFP

An army of road sweepers and refuse collectors keep the streets clean in the heart of Hong Kong, but on the outskirts, growing mountains of waste are testament to what campaigners say is an environmental crisis.

While the city may look well-kept, its three huge outdoor landfill sites are piled high with garbage and are set to reach capacity by 2020, the Hong Kong government’s Environmental Protection Department (EPD) said. Some predictions say the first will be full in a year or two.

“We need to have a clear roadmap for waste reduction, otherwise our rubbish will be on the streets in seven years’ time,” environmental scientist Jonathan Wong of the Hong Kong Baptist University told reporters.

The majority of the 13,000 tonnes of trash dumped at landfills in Hong Kong each day is termed “municipal solid waste,” which is generated by households, business and industry.

With a population of more than 7 million, Hong Kong is sending 1.3kg of municipal solid waste per person to landfills daily. Most of it is domestic waste — garbage from homes and institutions including schools — as well as refuse collected by public cleaning services, from food to furniture.

The territory’s per capita generation of domestic waste is significantly higher than other leading Asian cities such as Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul. The public’s attitude to consumption has been partly blamed for the problem.

“Hong Kong is a fast-moving city and people want to keep up with the trends, whether it’s clothing or iPhones,” said Angus Ho, executive director of Greeners Action, a Hong Kong environmental non-governmental organization. “They may have a perfectly good piece of furniture, but they will dump it for a new one because there is no sense of responsibility — there’s a habit of consuming and disposing of things.”

Ho, along with other campaigners, also blames government inertia for Hong Kong’s mountains of garbage. The EPD published a 10-year framework for managing the territory’s waste in 2005, but has been criticized for failing to implement much of the plan and for having no concrete schedule for instigating it. Currently, it is working on another waste management “blueprint” which is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

In a statement to the media, the EPD acknowledged that Hong Kong “has a waste crisis.”

It added that this can only be dealt with “by taking multi-pronged actions, ranging from waste reduction at source to enhancing waste recovery, as well as building a comprehensive and modern waste treatment infrastructure that can handle different types of waste.”

The government and environmnetal groups believe that waste charging for households and businesses according to the amount they dispose of is the key to reducing the amount of trasg generated — such schemes have worked well in Taipei and Seoul.

However, successive administrations have been hesitant to take on the public, commerce and political opponents to push through that policy.

“The government doesn’t want to do anything too drastic and creative because they will face a hard time in LegCo [the Legislative Council of Hong Kong],” Friends of the Earth director Hong Kong Edwin Lau told reporters.

“An effective framework is there — they don’t need to reinvent the wheel. They just need to get it rolling,” he said.

Lau says the HK$0.50 (US$0.06) plastic bag levy, introduced in 2009 and which currently covers 3,000 shops, including supermarkets and convenience stores, shows how effective a charging system can be in changing people’s behavior. The EPD says use of plastic bags at the retailers under the scheme has reduced by 90 percent.